Stopped at a Railroad Crossing
by TimmyTurnerFan
Summary: A short one-shot story of Martha, Skits, the Lorraines, Truman, and T.D. stopped at a railroad crossing. Admittedly a story I just threw together within two hours.


**A/N: **I do not own Martha Speaks. Martha Speaks belongs to Susan Meddaugh. My first Martha Speaks fanfic.

**Story:**

We begin with Daniel Lorraine driving through Wagstaff City with his wife Mariela, his daughter Helen, his baby son Jake, his dogs Martha and Skits, and two of their friends Truman and T.D. Jake is in a car-seat facing backwards, and is in the middle seat, with his sister Helen on the left and Martha on the right. In the very back are Truman, T.D., and Skits.

"Where's Martha?" Martha asks Jake as she's covering her eyes with her paw, "Where's Martha?"

Then she uncovers her eyes looking at him.

"Over here!" she says. "Peek-a-Boo!"

"Heh heh," laughs Jake.

Martha plays her game again.

"Who's a good dog?" says T.D. to Skits as he's rubbing him, "who's a good dog? Yes you are, yes you are!"

Skits licks T.D. on the cheek and T.D. laughs.

"Do you mind?" asks Truman, "I'm trying to read!"

"Oh don't mind us Truman," says T.D., "I love playing with Skits since he used to be my dog."

"But you see him a lot," says Truman.

"Yeah," says T.D., "but we don't live in the same house."

"Either way," insist Truman, "could you please just quiet down over there, I'm trying to read here."

"Come on guys," says Helen, "chill out back there. You don't wanna ruin our trip to the County Fair do you?"

"No," says Truman.

"No way," says T.D.

"It better not be ruined," says Martha, "I really want their food. Their hotdogs, their hamburgers, their sausages, their gyros…"

"Martha," says Helen, "don't you ever think of anything other than food?"

"What do you look forward to?" asks Martha.

"In addition to riding the Ferris Wheel and other things, I also want to see the animals there."

"Don't you see animals on the farm and at the zoo?" Martha asks?

"Um, yeah," answers Helen.

"So what's the difference about animals at a fair?" asks Martha.

"I don't know," says Helen, "just something I like to do."

"Still," says Martha, "I look forward to the grub."

"Whatever you say Martha," says Helen.

Turning to Daniel, she asks, "So Dad, what do you look forward to when we get to the County Fair?"

"I look forward to riding the Ferris Wheel too," he answers. "And I hate to sound like Martha but I look forward to the food too! I really love their gyros."

"What about you, Mom?" asks Helen?

"Well like you mi hija," she answers, "I look forward to looking at the animals at the Fair myself and taking Baby Jake along to see them.

Martha wants to say "Coo-coo!" but resists doing so so as not to get yelled at.

Still traveling on Wagstaff City streets, up ahead of the Lorraines and their friends is a railroad crossing and the red signal lights and gate lights begin to flash and the bells ring. Then the gates start to go down. Some cars continue across the tracks under the lowering gates, however Daniel stops once he's a little more than 15 feet from the nearest gate to him before it's completely horizontal.

Then a train horn starts to blast a few times before entering the crossing from the Lorraines' left to their right. They're at a two track crossing and the train is on the more distant track and a long freight train passes through. There are box cars, tank cars carrying hazardous material, covered hopper cars, and other freight cars. The train is traveling at 65 miles per hour.

"Aw a train," says Martha, "why does there have to be a train now? Why couldn't it wait until we got back home? Now we have to wait a little longer before getting to the fair! No fair!"

"Be patient, Martha," says Helen, "you know this train will end."

"And there will be a fair, Martha," says T.D., "so no need for the 'no fair,' comment. Hee hee."

"Yeah," says Helen, "good one!"

"What?" asks Martha?

"You said 'Fair,'" says Helen, "and 'no fair!' You said the same word but with different meanings!"

Mariela and Daniel chuckle.

"I see nothing funny about this!" says Martha.

"Roof!" barks Sktis.

"Don't tell me you think this is funny too!" says Martha to Sktis.

"Roof," Skits replies (Translation: I sure do!)

"Real nice, Skits," Martha says sarcastically, "real nice!"

"At least now I have more time to get my reading done," says Truman.

"Don't you wanna watch the train?" T.D. asks Truman.

"No," says Truman, "now please don't bother me."

"Okay," says T.D. turning his attention back to the passing train.

Even after the train clears the crossing, the gates are still down.

"Why are we not moving," asks Martha?

"I don't know," says Daniel, either the signals are malfunctioning or there's another train coming."

"There better not be," says Martha.

Unfortunately for her another train is coming as another set of horns blast.

"Ohhh!" Martha says annoyed.

Fortunately for her and everyone else who want to cross the tracks a short passenger train runs on the track closer to the Lorraines heading the opposite direction.

After that train passes, the bells stop ringing, the gates go up and when they are almost vertical, the lights stop flashing before the gates come to a complete stop.

"Okay we can go now," says Daniel pulling across the tracks.

"Finally!" says Martha. "Fair food, here we come!"

Everyone except Truman and Martha laughs.

The End

**A/N** I do plan to write at least one more Martha Speaks story and I'm planning for it to be about Ronald Boxwood and Reginald Steinglass. Just have to figure out how to write the story and what it will be about. Believe it or not, I actually like Ronald and Reginald although they do make unwise decisions that eventually catch up with them!

Thanks for reading.

**Why I Wrote this Story**/ **For Interested Readers Only: **One reason I wrote this story is because, for those of you who do not know I like railroad crossings, they are my passion. I won't include this in every Martha Speaks story I write or every story of any fandom, and I have trains in some of my Arthur stories, one of my Maya and Miguel stories, and one of my Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood stories. I also wrote this because it would be nice to see a railroad crossing on Martha Speaks and I'd hope that if there was one, it would be realistic, although if there were gates, they probably wouldn't have lights on them and most animated shows don't put lights on gates, some do though. That's okay if they don't.

It's also because the traffic signals included on the show are realistic, the signal heads and housings are yellow just like lots of the real traffic signals in the United States. Well, I know other cartoons do yellow traffic signal heads too. I'll look again at the traffic signals in other cartoons and see if they're yellow or some other color. But I figured if the traffic signals were realistic, so would the railroad crossing signals if they were ever featured. I'm obsessed with railroad crossings, and I'm especially interested in crossings on animated shows because some are realistic and some aren't so realistic and I like the more realistic ones better, especially if the gates have red lights on them, even just one or two lights if not the usual three.

The crossing in my story had gates with three red lights, and red and white stripes. The signals had 12" incandescent lights with 20" backgrounds and General Signals type 1 electronic bells. I thought of making the lights L.E.D. but I decided to make them incandescent for now, but later this crossing will have an L.E.D. upgrade.

Please read my profile to find out more about me. And like I said, I will try to write stories that don't include railroad crossings, I know most of you don't care about them.

Again, thanks for reading this. I may edit this story and the notes later.


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